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February 04, 2007

BSL stands for breed-specific legislation. Breed-specific legislation is like racial profiling, but for dogs, and punishes them for being the wrong breed (or mix) rather than for deeds. Breed-specific legislation can include:

Breed bans (you are no longer allowed to own a dog of a certain breed)

Breed-specific insurance requirements (you can only own a dog of a certain breed if you are able to obtain expensive insurance, sometimes not even available)

Breed-specific mandatory spay-neuter policies (you are required to spay or neuter your dog specifically because it is a target breed - this will eliminate entire breeds)

Breed-specific mandatory microchipping (you are required to chip your dog and your data will be tracked in a database like a sex offender)

Breed-specific legislation makes it harder to own, keep, or adopt dogs of a specific breed, mixed breed dogs, or dogs that even just "resemble" targeted breeds.

Each of these types of breed-specific laws or policies fails to keep children and communities safe. Bottom line - BSL hurts good dogs and good owners.

The fact is that not a single, credible animal welfare, veterinary medical or human health organization supports breed bans or other breed-specific measures as a means of dog bite prevention.

Not a single, credible source supports BSL - not the CDC, not the AVMA, not the AKC or the ASPCA.

Groups That Support Breed Specific Legislation

Three notable exceptions to those that oppose breed specific laws and measures are all from groups that market themselves as 'animal protection" organizations. We wish we could say otherwise:

The Humane Society Of The United States - a letter which surfaced showing they in fact supported breed-specific mandatory spay neuter in Louisville, KY. It should be noted that HSUS supported BSL to facilitate an anti-breeding agenda, not as a means of dog bite prevention. HSUS LETTERDownload Louisvillemulti-topicfinalletter.doc

PETAhas not been shy about supporting breed specific legislation - Read about PETA Founder Ingrid Newkirk's article in the San Francisco Chronicle: Pitbulls Are A Deadly Weapon

Best Friends Animal Sanctuary is supporting measures that would import the world's worst breed specific measures from Germany to the U.S.: READ BEST FRIENDS BREED SPECIFIC PLAN HERE: Download BestFriends.pdf

"A CDC study on fatal dog bites lists the breeds involved in fatal attacks over 20 years (Breeds of dogs involved in fatal human attacks in the United States between 1979 and 1998). It does not identify specific breeds that are most likely to bite or kill, and thus is not appropriate for policy-making decisions related to the topic. Each year, 4.7 million Americans are bitten by dogs. These bites result in approximately 12 fatalities; about 0.0002 percent of the total number of people bitten. These relatively few fatalities offer the only available information about breeds involved in dog bites. There is currently no accurate way to identify the number of dogs of a particular breed, and consequently no measure to determine which breeds are more likely to bite or kill.

Many practical alternatives to breed-specific policies exist and hold promise for preventing dog bites. For prevention ideas and model policies for control of dangerous dogs, please see the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) Task Force on Canine Aggression and Human-Canine Interactions: A community approach to dog bite prevention."

"Concerns about "dangerous dogs" have casued many local governments to consider supplementing exisiting animal control laws with ordinances directed toward the control of dpecific breeds or type of dogs. Members of the Task Force belive such measures to be inappropriate and ineffective. Statistics on fatalities and injuries caused by dogs cannot be responsibly used to document the "dangerousness" of a particular breed".

February 20, 2007

Help make sure that good dogs don't get a bad rap! If you see a news report concerning dogs or animals in the newspaper, in print, on the web, or on TV, please take a few minutes to fill out our survey on the story! Together, we can help educate the media to report responsibly on dog and other animal-related stories.